Tag: Dill race reports

These are the merits that we ideally want to judge our races by as those are the things we can control. However, in the end, we judge ourselves against one thing: the clock.

With each tick, that judgmental, unforgiving, heartless mechanical bastard decides if we fail or if we succeed. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to judge against something that can’t ostensibly be swayed by emotion or circumstances. If not for the clock, whose judgment can’t help but remain impartial, would we define success with excuses and inspirational quotes? Perhaps the solution is to judge ourselves against the clock, tempered by our emotional, physical and mental growth.

We certainly can’t excuse away every bad performance with complaints about course conditions, weather or illness. Yet sometimes we need to look at the bigger picture and realize that succeeding is nothing more than doing the very best with the circumstances handed to you on any given day. Just as we can’t play the blame game every time a goal is missed, we can’t deem ourselves a failure when circumstances beyond our control stack the odds against us.

My current goal is to break 3:30 in the marathon and it seems that each time I run and don’t break that goal, I have failed. Why 3:30? Does it earn me entrance into an elite race or earn me an award or allow me to quit my job and pursue running as a career or get me into a secret society? Nope. My current PR is 3:33:17, so I think it would be cool to break 3:30. Yes, I’m serious, I am judging my ability and my success as a runner based on the fact that I can’t yet seem to break a goal that I arbitrarily selected because it seemed “cool.”

Nope.

During the last year and a half, I’ve been struggling with more grief, sadness and stress than normal. Running has been my outlet, yet not my priority. I continue to run race after race, yet I feel that I have failed at most of them. I have good reasons why I haven’t cracked 3:30 at each of those races: It was too hot, I couldn’t breathe at the high elevation, the wind was insane, I was pacing a friend, I was worn out from back-to-back marathons, I was sick, I was sad, and I was simply tired of racing. A few of those races came awfully close to that 3:30 goal. Some races were in really nasty conditions where the time on the clock did not do justice to the strength and effort I left on the course.

The problem is, after so many races not resulting in the outcome I am looking for, I’ve started to believe that I am a failure and that my fastest days are behind me.

In the recent months leading up the Mount Desert Island Marathon in Maine, the pieces seemed to be finally falling into place for a good marathon. I had 12 weeks between races, which was much more than I’ve had in a long time. I chose to follow a plan from Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning, and I was able to execute almost every run. I was looking forward to my favorite type of race here, a small marathon in cool weather.

I was certain this was going to be my comeback race, that this was finally going to be my day. All of that confidence faded into the New England fog as my husband and I drove the course the day before the race. We went uphill, we went downhill, then up and down again and again. And then, near the end, we just seemed to keep going up and up. We finally reached the rusty old scaffolding that marked the end of the course, and my stomach turned to knots as we quietly drove back to the hotel. I tend to run well on hilly courses, but I was worried this course was simply going to be too much to handle.

Race morning came, and I listened nervously as one of the locals tried to ease our fears by telling us that the first 5 miles and the last 5 miles were really the toughest parts of the race, as long you got through the rest of the hills.

Knowing the early hills would mess with my pace, I decided to ignore my watch and run by feel. That decision was cemented when the road rose up in front of me a half mile into the course. Mile after mile I ran up and then down, never really finding my stride, trying to use the downhills to recover and make up some time all while trying to avoid the side stitches that kept lingering on my right side. By the time I got to the halfway mark, where the only clock on the course was located, my legs were toast from the hills. I could see that unless the back half of the course was as flat as North Dakota, the best I could hope for was a 3:50-something.

A funny thing happened on the back half of the course. I was tired, but I didn’t lose my mind. I simply stayed in the moment, and I ran. I walked through a few water stops to refill my handheld, but otherwise, I simply ran, tired legs and all. I even began picking people off on the uphill stretch from mile 19-25. I sprinted the downhill stretch from 25 to 25.5, and I finished strong in 3:53. I only lost 2 minutes on the back half of the course.

According to the clock, I failed miserably. But did I really? I ran a strong, consistent race on a tough course. I kept my head in the game and finished strong. But was I just making excuses to pretend I had succeeded and to pad my ego? Perhaps. Maybe I’ve learned to look for the small victories and successes that come with running. Perhaps I know that if I was able to run strong on this course without falling to pieces, that maybe, just maybe, with the right set of circumstances, that 3:30 PR is within my reach. It seems I ran up and down all those hills to fetch something bigger than a PR.

Instead, I fetched a big old bucket of self-confidence and a glimpse of the runner I still have the capability to be. I’ll continue to chase that unrelenting clock, but I’ll stop and acknowledge the small successes along the way.

Kenosha, Wisconsin is a bit of small town America nestled resolutely on the tough windy shores of Lake Michigan. Just an hour north of Chicago, the tiny metropolis with its clean streets and charming trolley cars seems to maintain the delicate balance of preserving history and reinventing itself to save its future. As you walk towards the port, you notice shiny new town homes, expensive yachts and large green spaces.

Yet it’s clear that these things were not the original inhabitants of this space. Digging a little deeper into their history, one will find that these spaces were originally factories that used the port to ship their goods. At some point those factories closed their doors. Yet today, little Kenosha stands strong and where the ghosts of industry linger, the city has found a way to survive and succeed.

This past weekend, I stood on that same windy shore ready to run a my 33rd marathon, which happened to be in my 29th state, and for the first time in a while my dad was there to cheer me on. I stood at that line, a veteran of so many races, sure of myself, yet vulnerable at the same time. I was a little beaten and weathered after the past year of losing my mom. Yet there I was, redefining myself and my relationship with my dad after losing someone who was so much a part of both of our lives.

These past few days the running world has been focused on one thing: the Boston Marathon, Marathon Monday, the best running day of the year. And for the past three years I’ve been a part of it. The first year was amazing. On my way to the expo, I cried when I saw the finish line, when I picked up my bib and as I marveled that I finally earned the right to be there. The second year was hot and tough and I don’t remember most of the race except for feeling grateful to have finished.

This time, I wasn’t certain I would go. My mom was dying, it was Easter weekend, and how many years in a row could I justify spending that much money and time for a race? But for the first time ever, my best running buddy and I were both qualified at the same time. After almost 14 years and thousands of miles together, how could we not run Boston together? Read more >>

I feel like I won’t be able to start writing again until I write about the Austin Marathon and my mom. It’s not necessarily to close that chapter of my life, because I’m not sure that is a chapter than can actually be closed. There will always be a “before Mom died” and an “after Mom died” in my life.

I find myself rationalizing all the reasons why I’m ok. After all, I was a 37 year-old adult when my mother died, and my mother was only 18 when hers did. I was lucky enough to have her with me to celebrate my college graduation and to pick out my wedding dress. She knew my husband and was able to meet and love both of my children. I realize many people have much worse situations and have lost their parents earlier in life, but at the end of the day I still miss my mom. So what does this have to do with running? Nothing. Everything.

The lumbering elephant of a school bus had been on its bumpy slog through the Black Hills of South Dakota for about 45 pitch black minutes when it suddenly slowed to a stop. I peered out the window and could only make out darkness and the outline of a few Port-a-Potties that were gently illuminated by the headlights of the school bus. When I stepped outside a blast of cold and nerves struck me and I began to shiver uncontrollably. I used the bathroom and climbed back into the comfortable blast of warmth coming from the school bus and took a seat next to my training partner Amie.

Then we waited. We waited in the darkness with just our thoughts and our nerves for more than an hour. Read more >>

When you’re a marathoner, you spend months training for your goal race. Race morning finally comes and you know you’ve done everything right for this race. This is going to be your day, your race, your breakthrough! Oh no! Something goes wrong. You cramp up, you drop all of your gels, you don’t sleep the night before, or your gastrointestinal system doesn’t cooperate. You muscle your way through the race and finish, but not nearly with the time you know you are capable of.

Your reasonable side reassures you that sometimes things just happen, but you worked so hard; how can you not be disappointed? You dwell on the race for a few days, thinking I don’t want to waste all of this training, and the next thing you know you are searching for another marathon in the next month so that you can run the race you were meant to.

Say you asked me for my input on this plan. “Don’t do it. Let it go, recover and get ready for the next race on your schedule,” I’d advise you. So naturally, when I found myself sick and riddled with side stitches at the Portland marathon, I had already decided that I was going to run the Monumental Marathon in Indianapolis five weeks later. Read more >>

I recently found myself standing on the starting line of the 44th annual Portland Marathon. Along the journey to that moment, I did all the right things. I signed up with a coach and followed her workouts to a tee. I pushed myself to hit paces in my workouts that I used to think were unreachable. I believed I was capable of running a 3:25 marathon, which would be a ten minute PR.

It was time to stop doubting myself and to trust in my training, but as I stood there I knew in that moment that a ten minute PR was not lying before me on those 26.2 miles of Portland road. What was this self-doubt? Was it nerves? Was it self-sabotage? Whatever it was, I felt deep within myself that this would not be that breakthrough race I have been striving for.

At that point, I still had a few minutes and 26.2 miles to run and more importantly decisions to make. Read more >>